Monthly Archives: March 2010

Ramblings from my journal…“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when desire comes, it is the tree of life.” Part of my wrestling is that I am hesitant to hope, having seen many hopes dashed time and time again. But I think the heart was fashioned to always hope – it has to always hope in something. And it has an amazing amnesia of what happened to hope the time before.

I was thinking on phrases from these two poems. Just thoughts, nothing solid, but I’ll share them with you and you can reflect, or not, if you will…

He was better to me than all my hopes
He took away all my doubts and all my fears
Jesus made a bridge of my broken dreams
And made a rainbow of my tears. – Unknown

You number my wanderings;
Put my tears into Your bottle;Are they not in Your book?
When I cry out to You,
Then my enemies will turn back;
This I know, because God is for me.
In God (I will praise His word),
In the LORD (I will praise His word),
In God I have put my trust;
I will not be afraid.
What can man do to me? -Psalm 56:8-11

So, I’ve been hearing messages and reading little clips about how we should keep going, and not turning back. Very often it’s just past the very point when we give up that breakthrough could have happened, where the reward was waiting the whole time, and we just didn’t have the strength, stamina, perseverance, patience or whatever to keep on keeping on. It reminds me of a little adventure I had when I was in Scotland.

The Pillars of Sliver Knowles

I went to a little beach called Silver Knowles, and I immediately noticed an island not too far off from the shore, and a kind of stone bridge looking structure that led to it, but the bridge looked broken down and falling apart. On the island, I saw a fort looking structure, so I decided I wanted to go out on the island. I began walking down the shore, hoping I could cross the bridge looking thing. As I was walking, I saw several really nice and peaceful places I could stop, sit and have a nice quiet time if I couldn’t get to the island, but I kept trekking along. It was a long ways away, but as I got closer, about 2/3 of the way there, I saw that what I thought was a bridge really wasn’t. They were these huge pillars, and they weren’t connected. Really impressive, but a disappointment, since I couldn’t see any other way to get to the island. I figured, well, I’ll just get as close as I can and sit on the piece of land jutting out by that not-bridge.

I headed in that direction, more and more disappointed that I couldn’t get to the island. When I got to that little piece of land, I was very surprised to see that next to the huge pillars was a very low walkway, so low that you couldn’t see it from far away, even so low that when the tide comes in, it would cover it.

The walkway by the pillars

As I made my way across the walkway, I thought about how like our lives it is. We have a vision or dream or goal in mind, and as we work towards it, the path that we thought we were going to take ends up being blocked, going the wrong direction, fallen apart, whatever. We have a choice then to go as far as we can go, or turning back, or turning aside to other things that seem doable or not as impossible. But, if we keep on going as far as we know how, a way tends to open up that we never saw before, and would never have seen if we didn’t keep pushing forward.

I know that I can see life lessons in the smallest and silliest things, but that one hit me like a brick. As I sat on the island (it was like a little Eden), I thought about how the walkway was longer than it looked, and really slippery in places. It changed height and material about halfway out, and it was a little unnerving to feel like I was walking out in the middle of the ocean (which, on the way back, nearly happened – I nearly had to run to beat the tide!). But it was totally worth it. The island was amazing, and I learned a great lesson that I don’t think I’ll forget anytime soon…

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“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
-Marianne Williamson, Quoted by Nelson Mandela at his 1994 Inaugural Speech